Senior Infantastics!

Friday, 7 April 2017

Hello from room 6! We have had a very busy term, from making bread and pancakes, to hatching chicks and our Easter egg hunt!

Green fingers!

We were able to pay a visit to the local garden centre so we could talk to the gardeners there and ask them any questions we had about planting seeds and we also needed to buy our cress seeds and broadbeans.

We decided as part of our Spring theme that we would plant broadbeans, cress seeds and grassheads! We first had to learn the important factors needed for a plant to grow, such as light/ warmth/ water and food. We had to make sure to water our cress seeds and grassheads everyday because otherwise they would not grow. We conducted an experiment using our cress seeds. We placed one lot of cress seeds in the window with food/ light and water, one in teacher's desk (without light) and the third batch was given light and water but no food. Our experiment was very successful as we saw the importance of needing food and light and water in order for our seeds to grow.

We planted our broadbeans in our school garden. Take a look!

Art
We learned all about the famous artist Picasso. We learned that he started painting from a very young age and some of his paintings were very creative. We also learned that he was the inventor of Cubism and we created our own Cubism pictures.

World Book Day.
On the 2nd of March we celebrated World Book Day in school. We all dressed up, including the teachers! We brought in our favourite book and we got to talk about why we liked the book. One pupil got to read her book to the class, she used great expression and we really enjoyed her story! The sixth class girls also came down to us and in our groups they read us a story. We also took a trip up to the computer room with our favourite books and we read them in the dark with a torch! This was really fun!To celebrate world book day we made bookmarks for our books. Hopefully they will be used over Easter! :)

English
We have covered loads in English this term. We have read lots of stories and we have done lots of writing every day, we really are getting good at writing! So good that Miss. Allen has started presenting us with handwriting awards! We write about stories that we have read, our favourite parts, our news from the weekend, sentences that Miss. Allen calls out and we have to write on our own and we have even started working on jumbled up sentences, that we have to fix so they make sense, eg. sad I am = I am sad. We wrote loads when we learned about the chicks who came to visit us in school.
One of our big books was the Little Red Hen, which we learned all about bread! We wrote out a recipe for bread which we baked in school. It was really tasty along with the butter and raspberry jam!! We did tell teacher it was the best bread we ever tasted.....so teacher was very happy to hear that!!

Maths

We have been very busy counting from 0-20 in maths. We can now count all the way up to 20. Count backwards from ten and even play number line games from 0-20. We have gotten really good at adding up to ten and creating number stories using cubes and teddies. This month we focused on weight. Each group had a weighing scales and we were able to weigh different objects such as a banana, apples, a shoe, a book, a scissors along with other objects. This was really fun and we were able to use our new words that we had learned such as heavier than/ lighter than/ balanced and weighing scales.

This is us waiting for the scales to balance! We found it's better to work as a team rather than on your own!

The Chicks

And finally! I am sure a lot of children were going home speaking about the new arrivals that came to stay with us on the 20th of March. Our seven chicks. The chicks came to us in the form of seven eggs. They stayed in the incubator until they hatched. On day two three of the eggs had hatched, but as we learned, the chicks needed to stay in the incubator for 12 hours where it was nice and warm before they could be placed in the brooder. By the end of the first week all seven chicks had hatched and we came up with some brilliant names such as Minion, Fluffy, Sparkles, Cutie Pie and many more! During the chicks stay we learned lots about eggs/ chicks and hens. Miss. Allen even showed us some pictures of her hens at her farm.We did loads of writing while the chicks came to stay and we had our very own 'Chick Check copy' which you will see hanging outside our classroom. You can ask me anything about chicks and I will tell you! . On the last day room 4, 5 and 6 went down to the hall where we made a huge circle and we let the seven chicks out of the brooder and into the middle of our circle. This was really fun! We learned how to hold them carefully, to cover their wings so they don't fly away and we also had to make sure they had enough food and water everyday!There is a video of the chicks hatching in room 4 if you would like to take a look!

We were sad to see the chicks go but they might come back and visit room 6 before the summer holidays as our teacher brought home to female chicks.

We hope you enjoyed reading this! Next month we are going to be learning all about animals- zoo and farm animals!

Sunday, 11 December 2016

This month's theme is Christmas and our role play area in Aistear is 'Santa's Workshop' which we were very excited to open!!We have to take it in turns to play the role of Santa (who has his own sleigh) and of course the elves who have to make the toys! We have learned lots of new vocabulary about Christmas and words associated with making toys! We even get to practice our wrapping skills as the Junk Art group make us presents that we need to wrap and place in Santa's sleigh so he can deliver them to all the boys and girls!

A sleigh made from junk art and Christmas decorations made from playdough!

We have a very special person in our classroom called 'Freddy the Elf'. He paid us a visit on the first of December and left us a very special note and present.

Freddy left us our very own Christmas Tree that we had to plant ourselves.John helped us to plant our tree in our very own pot and he also provided some soil,as that was a requirement. It will take three weeks for it to push through the top of the soil and before we go on our Christmas holidays we have to pick a spot outside (with the help of John) and plant our Christmas tree! We are very excited about that and we check in on our tree everyday to see if it has grown a bit!!

Maths

We have been learning all about 2d and 3d shapes. We reserved a spot in the classroom which was for our 2d shapes. We brought in items from our homes which were 2d shapes!We got to make our very own 2d shaped aliens which are on display in the corridor outside our classroom.Have a look! Ask me to name some 2d or 3d shapes around the home, I bet I can!
We have also been very busy writing our numbers stories, counting from 0-10 backwards/ forwards, skip counting and even counting as Gaeilge! We have a new game to start off our Maths Class which is called 'Build a snowman'. We have to roll a dice and each number has a particular part of the snowman's body we have to draw, sometimes when we get the same number twice we have to roll it again and hope we get a different number! We have lots of fun trying to be the first group to complete the snowman!

PE

In Pe we have reached our goal of being able to run for one whole minute continuously! We are normally very tired after running for long so we like to take a little break for a minute or two to catch our breath! But we are very proud of ourselves for being able to run for so long. We have been learning all about running, jumping in different ways, throwing - under arm throwing, catching and station teaching. This is where there are four different areas in the hall and we have to practise all our skills we have learned. We really enjoy station teaching as we get to move on to a different station each time. We have also learned our starting position for when we are running. On the word 'Ready' we must get on one knee and put our hands out in front of us. On the word 'steady', we must take our knee off the ground and get our bums in the air. And on the word 'Go' we must take off!!

SESE

Last month our theme was 'Clothes' and we were learning all about the different types of clothes for different types of weather. We also discussed what the word 'Waterproof' meant. Room 6 received a letter from a bear called 'Honeypotts'. Honeypotts wanted us to conduct an experiment on four different types of hats that he had sent us.

We had to place four drops of water on each hat and see which hat was not letting the water through. The winner was the plastic hat! That did not allow any water through it and therefore was waterproof! We wrote down our results and sent a letter back to Honeypotts. It was very exciting to get a parcel delivered to our room!

On Thursday we had a visitor to the school, the 'Sam Maguire' Cup. It was really exciting to see the cup in real life and we were allowed to wear our Dublin jerseys or the colour blue into school that day.

We have a very busy two weeks left in school. We are learning two new songs 'Jingle Bells and Away in a Manager'. Maybe you could play 'Away in Manager' to your child and ask them to sing along! Take a look at our classroom window as you come into school, we have decorated it with our Christmas Tree's that we have made from different materials and paper.We had to practice our cutting skills to make the tree's!

Monday, 10 October 2016

Welcome to Room 6 with Ms.Allen! We are Senior Infantastics and we would like you to have a look at what we have been doing,so far in Room 6.

We had our class photo taken when the weather was nice. Here is a sneak peak of what's to come! This is our 'fun photograph'. As you can see we are all smiling! : )

The theme for the month of September was 'Myself'. We talked all about our families, bodies and our five sense, learning a short rhyme called 'Five senses'. If you ask me I will recite if for you!

Our Family Tree's

In English we have done lots of writing and we have also revised our letters and sounds such as 'd/ n/ p/ /c /k / g/ m / r/ ' . We love to experiment with how we can make the letters so we practise using playdough, writing them in the air and also using the whiteboards along with practising them in our handwriting copies. We love listening to teacher reading our big books. This month we read 'The Gruffalo, Zog, and Owl Babies'. We did lots of work around all these books and some of our work is displayed in the classroom and outside the classroom.

Story Sequencing - Owl Babies

Our Owl Babies

The Gruffalo

Story Sequencing The Gruffalo

In Maths this month we were learning all about the numbers 1-5 and how to write them. We recited a rhyme about each number to help us remember how we write them. We did the same with our numbers as we did with our letters- making them in the air, using playdough and writing them on the whiteboards.

Aistear is our favourite part of the day. This month we our role play area was 'At The Doctors'. We always start it off by planning what we are going to do. Sometimes teacher will show us a video clip - we watched a clip called 'Topsy and Tim visit the doctor'. Here we got to see what happens when you go to the doctor- checking in with the receptionist, getting a number and sitting in the waiting room. Teacher taught us loads of new words to do with the doctor such as - stethoscope/ bandage/ reflex hammer/ ear and throat device/ patient and lots more words! Everyday one group got to play in the role play area dressing up like a doctor with our gowns and gloves and pretending we were patients and one person was the receptionist, making sure we sat quietly and patiently until our number was called! In the other areas we had small world- which we made Gruffalo/ owl baby masks and we reenacted the story along with story sequencing. We also have a playdough area where we made the characters from The Gruffalo and Owl Babies. Other days we made jigsaws, completed bead work, used the peg boards and playing in sand (which we love, the messier the better!)

On the 30th of September we had our sponsored walk. We walked all the way from school down to Corkagh Park. I t was a long walk but the excitement of doing no work and playing in the playground kept us going! Teacher said we were very well behaved and we were very sensible when it came to crossing the roads, staying on the paths and holding on to our big person's hand. We had loads of fun playing on all the different things in the playground and it was lovely to bond with our classmates and the other children in senior and junior infants.When we came back to school we were allowed watch a film and eat our lunch. We were very sleepy and glad when the bell rang at half past one, as we all needed a nap!

We hope you enjoyed reading this and watch out for our new post in October!